Yadier Molina pushed umpire Jerry Meals, should have been ejected

By Patrick Gordon | Oct 4, 2014

St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina pushed home plate umpire Jerry Meals during a scuffle between the Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers. So why wasn't he ejected from the game? Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports /

St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina pushed home plate umpire Jerry Meals during a scuffle between the Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers. So why wasn’t he ejected from the game?

Normally, when a player puts his hands on an umpire, he’s ejected almost immediately. This wasn’t the case during a minor brouhaha between the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers during Game 1 of their divisional series on Friday night, when Yadier Molina appears to have gotten away with one after he pushed home plate umpire Jerry Meals.

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It all started when Adam Wainwright hit Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig with a pitch in the bottom of the 3rd inning. The pitch was up and in, hitting Puig on the upper arm.

It clearly wasn’t intentional, as it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for an elite pitcher like Wainwright to allow the leadoff hitter to get on base early in a close playoff game. But Adrian Gonzalez, the on-deck batter when Puig was hit, took issue with it and got in Molina’s face when he arrived at the plate.

Meals, the home plate umpire, got between them to try to separate the two, prompting Molina to push him out of the way in an attempt to go after Gonzalez. Later, Molina would say that he told Gonzalez “if you’re going to scream at me, you’ve got to be ready to fight.”

You can see Molina shove Meals at around the 0:43 mark in this MLB.com video:

Most likely, the umpires decided that they would let it slide since it’s a playoff game and ejecting a guy like Molina would have a huge impact on the game. Was that the right decision? It depends on your perspective.

As much of a game-changer as it would be if Molina were tossed, you could make the argument that it was a huge game-changer when he was NOT ejected for something that is normally an automatic ejection. The Dodgers seemed to get a spark from this little dust-up, but could they have won the game if Molina were taken out? We’ll never know.

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